The invention relates to a composite polymeric material for biological and medical applications and to the method for preparation thereof.
The known method for manufacturing of substitutes of organs and tissues was based on composite materials, where one component was a three dimensionally crosslinked synthetic hydrophilic polymer of 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate or a monomethacrylic ester of higher homologous glycols, and the other component was collagen. The above mentioned procedure consisted in the preparation of gel with opened pores of the size larger than 100 .mu.m (micrometers) and in filling these pores, at least in part, with collagen in the course of polymerization or on completion of polymerization. The resulting composite material consisted of the insoluble spatial network of gel with the average pore size 100-400 .mu.m and of collagen filling in the communicating pores and was modified in the way to attain a controlled resorption of the material after implantation into organism. Some biological properties of this composite material were published in M. Chvapil et al., J. Biomed. Mater. Res. 3,315 (1969).
A disadvantage of this procedure is the final shape of product, which was obtained in the form of bulky blocks or similar spatial figures, e.g. a thick-walled tube. The shape of product can be modified only by difficult machining, as a rule in the frozen state when the material exhibits the necessary rigidity. In addition, the structure of this composite material is macroscopically rough, which fact leads in practice to a non-homogeneous intergrowing by tissues and to imperfect function of implanted prosthesis, e.g. to leakage of prostheses of tubular organs caused by an excessive porosity of their walls. The preparation of this foils or coatings, e.g. on a textile base; is virtually impossible according to the above mentioned method. These difficulties, following from the used technological procedure, did not allow in particular application of these attractive materials in a larger practical scale beyond the frame of experiments with animals.